


Painting My Body with Your Love

by fell_in_love_didnt_you



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms, Snowbaz - Fandom, baz pitch - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, M/M, Soulmate AU, soulmate alternate universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fell_in_love_didnt_you/pseuds/fell_in_love_didnt_you
Summary: This was inspired by a post by phan-cannons, and a second part was added onto by featuredfander. All the idea goes to them, and I just think this is an absolutely wonderful idea for SnowBaz.Full post:phan-cannonsHas anyone done a soulmate au where the things your soulmate loves shows up on your skin? Just think.Your brother has an ice skate, a small orange cat, and the sunset.Your best friend has a guitar, a mug of coffee, an older couple who’s probably their soulmates parents, and chocolate.You have the complete cast of multiple shows you don’t even know the name to and the tumblr logo.But when two soulmates fall in love, they get a picture of themselves showing up, cause now they’re added to the list of things their soulmate loves.I just really like this idea.featuredfanderthis could be so heartbreaking.imagine your soulmate is one of your friends but they don’t know it’s them, and they start dating someone else, and one day, that person’s face shows up on your wrist.imagine watching your soulmate lose hope, lose interest, and the images on your body fade, or gray, or disappear completely.





	1. Chapter 1

This was inspired by a post by phan-cannons, and a second part was added onto by featuredfander. All the idea goes to them, and I just think this is an absolutely wonderful idea for SnowBaz.

Full post: 

phan-cannons   
Has anyone done a soulmate au where the things your soulmate loves shows up on your skin? Just think.  
Your brother has an ice skate, a small orange cat, and the sunset.   
Your best friend has a guitar, a mug of coffee, an older couple who’s probably their soulmates parents, and chocolate.  
You have the complete cast of multiple shows you don’t even know the name to and the tumblr logo.  
But when two soulmates fall in love, they get a picture of themselves showing up, cause now they’re added to the list of things their soulmate loves.  
I just really like this idea.

featuredfander   
this could be so heartbreaking.   
imagine your soulmate is one of your friends but they don’t know it’s them, and they start dating someone else, and one day, that person’s face shows up on your wrist.   
imagine watching your soulmate lose hope, lose interest, and the images on your body fade, or gray, or disappear completely.   
imagine this in a world with superpowers. you can manipulate fire, and every day your heart is broken by the images of ice and water on your wrist.   
imagine.   
Source: phan-cannons

**

Simon looks down at his wrist. His smiling face is looking back at him. 

He sighs and jams his face into his hands. It’s aggravating. It’s infuriating. It’s been there all day. He doesn’t know when it showed up. All he remembers is that in his fifth years Spells class years ago, Penny grabbed his wrist and shoved it in his face, shouting, “Look! Look!” 

And now Simon sees his goddamn face staring back at him every day. It’s aggravating and infuriating because his soulmate knows him. His soulmate loves him. And he doesn’t even know who this person is. It isn’t Agatha, because he loves her, and her face doesn’t show up on her arm. He wants to cry all the time because it’s fucking embarrassing. His soulmate is walking around with his ex-girlfriend’s face on his arm and probably sour cherry scones across their back. 

What the fuck? 

His soulmate also loves football. The day the football shows up is also the day Baz chucks one at his head. Classy. His soulmate loves Daniel Radcliffe and The Office US version. It’s a bit funny, really. Simon knows he prefers the UK version so much more, and his soulmate is the absolute opposite. They love the moon and the stars and their favorite planet is Uranus, though there’s a little sad face right next to it. He vaguely wonders what that’s about, and he dreams one day that he’ll be able to ask his soulmate what exactly the story there is. 

Baz keeps his marks completely covered. He wears long sleeves even in the summer, and he undresses and redresses in their bathroom. No matter how much Simon peeks and prods at him, Baz says no and slams the door in his face. Simon just wants to know. Baz sees his all the time. It isn’t fair being stuck with him in the same room for at least three more years and never being able to see his soulmarks. It’s bullshit. 

Simon knows it’s also privacy. 

**

His soulmate loves sad books and bad movies. The Book Thief is burned on Simon’s right thigh. He didn’t read it until he saw his soulmate loved it, and he bawled his eyes out for days after. The first Twilight movie is seared onto his left shoulder, and he sees it if he turns in the mirror in the morning. The cover makes him cringe, but it’s okay. 

One day, Baz shoved him out of the way for the bathroom and looked like he’d been punched in the gut when he got a look of that. But he hid it in a second with a snarl and asked, “Your girlfriend a fan of sparkling vampires or something?” before he slammed the bathroom door shut. 

Again, the classiest man Simon has ever known. 

Over time, the football fades. Baz stops chucking things at him. Ed Sheeran song titles cover his right hand. Simon listens to them all, even the sad ones. Daniel Radcliffe’s face turns into some singer named Troye Sivan. Simon loves him and his music, so he’s sure that his soulmate has the same marks. 

A little flame appears on his index finger. It’s like he’s shooting fire every time he points. It makes him feel powerful. It makes him feel unexplainably vulnerable as well. 

The day he finally gets a look at Baz’s soulmarks is a good day until then. Penny is upbeat because she’s on her way to beating out Baz for top spot in their class. She’s excited to write the speech, possibly more excited than Simon has ever seen her. Sometimes Simon wishes Penny was his soulmate. It would be so easy with her. It always is. They’re really compatible with one another, but she loves someone from America that Simon’s going to meet in a few months. 

He comes back to the room early. Baz is supposed to be out somewhere with someone. At least, that’s what he told Simon earlier. Simon feels weird about him lately. He looks longer and feels uncomfortable when they meet eyes. It’s…not a completely awful feeling, but it isn’t familiar. It’s so new. 

He chucks his bag onto his unmade bed and sighs, twisting so he hears loud cracks in his back. He registers that the shower is running, and he looks over to see that steam is fuming out of the crack in the door. So Baz is here. Simon was going to eat smelly salt and vinegar crisps and not bother to eat with an amount of grace, but it’s not like he does usually. He begins to unpack his bag, chucking his books down onto his bed and placing the unneeded things back in his bag. 

Right as he’s about to ungraciously flop down onto his bed and begin gorging himself nearly to death, the door to the bathroom opens, and Baz walks out. Only he’s not really dressed save for a white towel covering him up where Simon especially prefers. 

Baz’s eyes go wide, and Simon’s sure he trying to catch his eye, but he’s looking elsewhere. Baz’s chest is littered with soulmarks. And he means absolutely littered. There’s hardly any skin left to compete with the complex marks. He catches a few that make sense: The Office UK version’s cover, a wand that is lit with magic right over Baz’s heart, and the Watford insignia. He wants to laugh because the more marks, the more in love someone is with you. Simon has tons, possibly as many as Baz does. 

It should hit him faster than it does. His mind is much slower than Penny’s and Baz’s and even Agatha’s, but damn. It takes Baz slamming the door in his face for Simon to get it, and that’s only halfway. He’s a bit frozen, really. His hand is reaching out where it must’ve subconsciously reached for Baz, and he wants to knock on the bathroom door, but he can’t find it within himself to do it. 

So he takes a walk. 

He just grabs his wand and leaves the room. It isn’t easy to do so, but his head is light, and the air feels good on his burning skin. He wants to clear his mind, and he nearly does. However, one thought keeps circling his mind like a fucking koi fish, and that’s Baz Baz Baz Baz Baz Baz BAZ. It’s screaming at Simon (if thoughts can scream), and he secretly wants his feet to betray him. He wants to walk back into Mummer’s and slam Baz against a wall and demand to know why he didn’t tell him. And then maybe kiss him. It’s all so confusing. Simon can hardly keep his thoughts in coherent form. 

He kicks the ground underneath him and comes to a stop. The sun is going down. The wind is starting to chill instead of comfort him. He knows he’ll have to head in soon, but this heady feeling he has…Simon doesn’t want it to go away. It’s addicting. It makes his stomach churn in a way that might be good. He honestly hasn’t felt like this in a while, probably for good reason. He wants to keep feeling it. It makes him want to smile and simultaneously cringe. It’s weird. It’s suffocating. It’s freeing. 

His feet fall flat before the door to their room. His hand shakes as he makes a small incision into one of them, pressing his palm against the ancient wall. It’s the only way it distinguishes him from intruders. While it is brilliant, Simon constantly has nicks in his palms from the security system, as Penny calls it. 

The door hardly creaks open, just enough for the light of a desk lamp to filter into the dim hallway. It catches Simon’s left eye, and he peaks in to see Baz, head in his hands, shoulders slumped, sitting at the desk. Papers are scattered around him on the desk, and some are overflowing into the bin beside it. There’s also a posh candle scent wafting through the air, and Simon rolls his eyes because he knows it’s the candle that cost nearly sixty pounds that Baz keeps in his wardrobe. 

Simon quietly creeps in and tries to shut the door as quietly as possible, but Simon knows Baz hears him, especially when the door hits the jamb. He doesn’t know what to say. There’s a lot of things that want to word-vomit right out of Simon’s mouth, but he can’t make a single noise. 

“Are you going to stand there gawking or do we need to talk about?” Baz asks. His tone isn’t condescending. It’s sadder and beaten down. He hears the slump in Baz’s shoulders rather than sees it, and the odd urge to comfort Baz sends Simon’s hands twitching to touch him, but he stars where he is. 

Baz looks over his shoulder, and Baz sees that he’s been crying. His eyes are bloodshot, and the skin underneath them is puffy and slightly red from his palms. It really makes Simon ache a bit inside, thinking that he caused this reaction. No matter what stupid fight or childish spell match they’d gotten in, it’s never been Simon’s intention to hurt Baz so bad that he’s reduced to this. 

Simon’s back slumps against the door, feeling it press and strain with his weight. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Baz,” Simon tries to say, though it comes out only as a whisper. He finds himself looking everywhere but Baz when he’s speaking. “It’s not a big deal.” 

“For you,” Baz replies, his voice shaking. “You don’t have the family I do. You don’t have a whole bloodline depending on you, Snow.” 

His last name being thrown at him like that makes Simon take in a shaky breath. He crosses his hand behind his back, pressing them flat against the wooden door. “You don’t have to love me,” Simon whispers, his face staring up at the ceiling. Why is he crying? He angrily wipes at his own tears, cursing at himself and feeling his face grow hot. 

“It’s not that,” Baz says, but Simon’s cutting them off with his sharp intakes. 

“I don’t even know why I’m fucking upset,” he confesses. He steps away from the door, ripping off his school shirt and slacks. He lay down in his bed, facing the opposite way from Baz, his bed, and the desk light. He can feel himself being wound up, his breathing turning into tiny gasps for breath and hiccupping sobs. He’s angry with himself, wanting to both punch and hold on to something. That stupid fucking feeling in his stomach that he’d had earlier is gone, replaced with some form of sadness Simon just doesn’t understand. 

“Snow,” Baz says, his voice a bit softer, and Simon pulls the covers up even more over his head.


	2. Chapter 2

Simon doesn’t know when he falls asleep or when the day turns to night and becomes day again. His cotton bedsheets trap warm breaths beneath them, and he can see the glow of the morning light casting the sheet’s orange glow onto his face. He closes his eyes and shifts in the bed, flopping onto his stomach and breathing out deeply. 

Simon blindly pats his face, feeling his puffy under eyes and cold cheeks. He vaguely wonders if he fell asleep crying, and then he calls back to the previous night. He feels the pressure at the back of his eyes, and the burning comes back to his throat. He’s angry with himself for getting so angry, but at the same time, Simon feels like that anger should tell him something. 

He hears something shift in the room beyond his bedsheets, and Simon stills immediately. 

It’s weird, he thinks to himself. Yesterday, he had woken up without knowing his soulmate. Now, he can’t even lift the covers from his head to look Baz in the eyes. Baz…his soulmate…Baz the vampire…his soulmate. 

Weird. 

There’s a shuffle outside the covers, a mumbled curse as something strikes an object, and then a pale hand is lifting the covers back. Simon stills again, and he wishes his eyes had been closed so that he could maybe pretend he was asleep. But Baz and him make eye-contact, and there’s an awkward silence that lingers between them. 

“Snow,” Baz mumbles, and Simon closes his eyes, turning away from Baz and towards the bathroom. “Snow,” Baz repeats, this time sitting down beside Simon and shifting awkwardly on the bed. 

“You don’t like me,” Simon mutters into the sheets, and it’s not a question. He kinda knew that Baz was a bit of an asshole, but your soulmate…he doesn’t know. Simon can’t honestly think at the moment, not when he can feel Baz’s back through his shirt and the rising and falling of his body. 

“It’s not that,” Baz replies. He hesitates. “You’re the Chosen One, Simon.” 

That’s another weird thing: Baz has never said his name. He’s only ever called Simon by his last name with a bitterness that Simon likened to the taste of cilantro. 

Simon sat up from his laying position, turning to come face to face with Baz. They were so close that Simon could feel Baz’s breath on his lips and hear his pulse in his ears. There was a second where Simon stopped to watch the way Baz’s breath hitched when he cupped his pale cheek. But by then he was kissing him, and it felt good to just stop talking. Talking with Baz was far too complicated. It always ended or started in a fight and one of them had bruises. 

But this was a different fight. It was pulling at lips with teeth and pressing forward with tongues and pressing hard kisses to the other’s lips. It was suffocating. It was exhilarating. 

“You like me?” This was a question. Simon asked it against Baz’s lips, little tears in his eyes, and he looked down to see Baz’s face on Baz’s pale arm.


End file.
